June 6th, 2012

I’ve been continuing to work on the snacking habit, using the method described in the previous post (from Duhigg’s book). It’s been two weeks, and I’ve been doing all right, in that I’m snacking a lot less and paying more attention to what I eat. I’m completely off of Diet Coke and chocolate, and I haven’t had any alcohol except on weekends. Most days I don’t eat any baked things with sugar. There were a number of days when I ate baked treats in the first week, mainly when I baked them for one occasion or another. I can’t just stop making stuff for potlucks, bake sales, and the kids, just because I don’t want to let myself eat the stuff; unfortunately, what I bake I have a hard time not eating. These were the main transgressions in my “yes” column, and there were several. So, about the results? I haven’t lost any weight. My scale is unreliable, but it’s bouncing around the same weights it was bouncing around two weeks ago, so I have no reason to believe I’ve made any progress there.

That’s not going to do.

Now, part of Duhigg’s deal is that he puts a lot of emphasis on consistency during the month of establishing the habit. So I’m not quitting the checklist and substitution strategy. I’m just going to be a little more strict with the rules I’m notating. I’ll continue to check the “no” column every time I’m able to resist temptation and keep my mouth shut instead of eating something, and I’ll still keep finger-food vegetables on hand to snack on instead as a substitute. But I’m going to make notes in the “yes” column each time I eat *standing up.* I think I’ve getting out of the habit of just stuffing my face at will, but I still have way too much of a tendency to take a bite or several when I’m cooking or cleaning up. And when I bake, it’s really not hard for me to say “no” when the baked thing is finished, cleaned up and put into containers; but I cannot seem to resist when I’m actually baking or when it’s fresh out of the oven. Those are bad habits, and they put real food into that stomach! So, while I’m not making changes to actual meals right now, I’m going to work on extending the ability to say “no”, and try to eat only when I am sitting down with food on a plate. Let’s see how I do with that.

I’m going to work on cutting back on the late snack, too; if I could get a little more control of the late evening practices and get to bed earlier, I’d be eating less at the late snack, and eventually could maybe eliminate it entirely. More importantly, it would be easier to get up to exercise on time regularly, which is a practice that needs some work too.